Professor Eric Osei-Assibey, an economist and statistician, predicts that the fiscal prognosis for the local economy will decline to around 6.6 percent in the next months of the year 2023.
He says that if the government implements fiscal reduction measures while it works to get a $3 billion IMF bailout by May 2023, this estimate may be realised.
Prior to this, both Fitch Solution and the International Monetary Fund estimated the country’s fiscal outlook to be 6.6 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.
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Speaking at the DBG/GAB Ghana’s Medium-Term Outlook presentation in Accra, under the theme: Ghana’s Medium-Term Outlook; Navigating through Economic Uncertainties amid an IMF Program, Prof. Eric Osei-Assibey expressed optimism that government will in the coming days reduce its expenditure drastically to maintain a positive economic outlook.
“The projection is that the fiscal outlook looks positive. There is going to be an improvement in the fiscal deficit which stood at about 10.4%. As of last year, 2020, it was 11.2%. This is going to reduce to about 6.6%,” he said.
“What explains that is because of the front-loaded fiscal consolidation. We expect revenue performance to be good because of the new taxes bills that have been passed. We expect significant expenditure cut and government interest payment obligation will reduce for both domestic and external,” he added
